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3232How our loneliness hurts us all, and what we can do about ithttps://www.shareable.net/how-our-loneliness-hurts-us-all-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/
https://www.shareable.net/how-our-loneliness-hurts-us-all-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/#respondThu, 07 Mar 2019 04:58:46 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=30284I graduated from college during a recession in the early 1990s, but it wasn’t just the unlucky economic timing that hurt me. I didn’t have the typical college experience. I worked my way through a commuter college. My extracurricular activity was limited. Partly due to this, my social world collapsed after graduation. I found myself

]]>I graduated from college during a recession in the early 1990s, but it wasn’t just the unlucky economic timing that hurt me. I didn’t have the typical college experience. I worked my way through a commuter college. My extracurricular activity was limited. Partly due to this, my social world collapsed after graduation. I found myself working in a socially isolating retail job and living with roommates with whom I had little in common. For a couple of years I scrambled, usually unsuccessfully, to find friends and dates. I was very lonely and desperately unhappy as a result. It was one of the lowest, most painful periods of my life.

At the time, I thought this a personal failure. I thought I was solely responsible for my miserable situation. Little did I know then that I wasn’t alone in my loneliness. I was part of social trend that now has become a grave crisis. Today, the average American has only one confidant. That’s down from three since 1985. This means that most people have just one friend with whom they can discuss important life matters. Because one is the average, many people have no one to confide in.

This sharp increase in social isolation parallels trends in other industrialized nations including Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. In fact, just last year the U.K. created a new government position with an eerie title that could’ve come straight out of Orwell’s “1984” — a Minister of Loneliness. It was created because “more than nine million people in the country often or always feel lonely,” according to a 2017 report. That’s about one lonely Brit in every seven. The irony is that while we’re more connected than ever — the average Facebook user has 338 friends — we’re also more alone than ever.

In the U.K. and elsewhere, the epidemic of loneliness is viewed as a health crisis. It’s worse than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s associated with a greater risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. It increases the pressure on an already strained healthcare system.

But the effects likely go well beyond this serious (and even deadly) threat to the health of individuals worldwide. Healthy social networks support community resilience, prosperity, and effective government. Sociologist Robert Putnam warned us about the dangers of declining social capital in his seminal 2000 book, “Bowling Alone.” He showed us with hard evidence that states with high social capital have less violent crime, greater health, higher standardized test scores, more prosperity, and lower rates of tax evasion.

So it turns out that social isolation doesn’t just create a collection of sick individuals, but also a sick society. Unfortunately, we didn’t heed Putnam’s warning or follow his prescriptions. We now live in a world in which the social fabric is in danger of fraying beyond repair. Racial, economic, and political polarization are at levels that we couldn’t have imagined even just a few years ago. Authoritarianism is on the rise the world over. Social media, now pervasive, exploits our relationships for commercial gain, sows division, and distracts us. Our ability to understand each other, talk to each other, and work together seems dangerously degraded. This is at a time when we need to work together more than ever in order to combat the existential threats of climate change and extreme wealth inequality.

What are we to do?

There is much that can be done — and we must do it together. Shareable invites you to explore solutions with us by first reframing these problems as a crisis of society, not just of health. We’ll look at the key drivers of loneliness, social isolation, and civic disconnection. Then we’ll explore some of the top responses from around the world.

We’ll do this through a series of articles and a live forum the evening of April 10 at San Francisco State University where we’ll engage in a dialogue around the question: “How can we respond as a community to reduce social isolation?” We’ll go beyond the typical approaches to look at how sharing, civic engagement, the solidarity economy, communal housing and workspaces, and other social innovations can help us reweave the social fabric. At the end, you’ll have gained a new understanding of the issue, new potential collaborators to tackle the issue with, and a well-rounded playbook in e-book form to use and share with the world.

Desmond Tutu said it best: “A person is a person through other persons.” We hope this exploration will renew our understanding of humans as social beings who develop through relationships and meaningful engagement in society. As Yuval Noah Harari argued in his book, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” our unique talent as a species is our ability to flexibly collaborate in large numbers. We should be designing our communities, organizations, and governments to better develop and take advantage of this powerful gift.

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Find all of the articles in our first quarter social isolation series here:

We held an event on April 10, 2019 about social isolation. Read the event recap and watch the video from the event here.

Additionally, this is the first of four quarterly participatory magazines we’re producing in 2019. Each participatory magazine combines digital editorial with a live event focused on an urgent, sharing related challenge. The goal of each participatory magazine is to catalyze action. Drop us a line if you’d like to get involved or sponsor one or more of our 2019 participatory magazines: info@shareable.net. We can’t do this alone!

]]>https://www.shareable.net/how-our-loneliness-hurts-us-all-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/feed/0Participatory urban planning in New Zealandhttps://www.shareable.net/participatory-urban-planning-in-new-zealand/
https://www.shareable.net/participatory-urban-planning-in-new-zealand/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 19:20:31 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31518Auckland’s population is expected to grow by more than 50 percent in the next 30 years. To meet the social and infrastructural challenges associated with accelerated growth, in 2011 the city launched a comprehensive public consultation. The process included an open summit, public workshops, and multiple opportunities for the community to have a voice in

]]>Auckland’s population is expected to grow by more than 50 percent in the next 30 years. To meet the social and infrastructural challenges associated with accelerated growth, in 2011 the city launched a comprehensive public consultation. The process included an open summit, public workshops, and multiple opportunities for the community to have a voice in the final outcome of their urban development plan. Eight thousand pieces of public feedback were submitted on the initial draft and were received through a variety of mediums and platforms such as the project’s website, the postal service, email, and social media. The Office of Ethnic Affairs worked to solicit comments from ethnic minorities in order to make the final product as representative of the local community as possible.

The Auckland Plan is an example of a participative and inclusive co-design project that balanced market, state, and commons interests with the goal of becoming “the world’s most livable city.” Unique action plans have been developed for 13 key focus areas: people, Maori, arts and culture, historic heritage, recreation and sport, economy, environment, response to climate change, rural, urban, housing, physical and social infrastructure, and transport.

The plan was finalized after a year of work, in which thousands of Aucklanders had the opportunity to give feedback, make proposals and draft their own submissions. Thanks to a transparent and honest system of communication between the city and civil society, the plan demonstrated a path of collaborative and co-managed design that is an example to be replicated in many cities around the world.

]]>https://www.shareable.net/participatory-urban-planning-in-new-zealand/feed/0How collective giving is transforming philanthropyhttps://www.shareable.net/how-collective-giving-is-transforming-philanthropy/
https://www.shareable.net/how-collective-giving-is-transforming-philanthropy/#respondWed, 22 May 2019 21:02:12 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31534A new wave is remaking philanthropy and giving across the United States and abroad, starting at the grassroots level. Community-led shared gifting, giving circles or, as they are referred to academically, collective giving, is growing rapidly. Collective giving is when donors come together to pool resources and collectively decide on how they want to distribute

]]>A new wave is remaking philanthropy and giving across the United States and abroad, starting at the grassroots level. Community-led shared gifting, giving circles or, as they are referred to academically, collective giving, is growing rapidly.

Collective giving is when donors come together to pool resources and collectively decide on how they want to distribute funds. It allows individuals and entities with fewer resources to also participate in philanthropy and can build community. According to the multi-university research center the Collective Giving Research Group, funds distributed through collective giving in the US tripled between 2007 and 2017, totaling $1.29 billion. The movement is widespread, and various forms of collective giving can be found across the country.

“A lot of these groups are trying to build philanthropy among different people,” said Angela M. Eikenberry, part of the Collective Giving Research Group and a Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Nebraska — Omaha. Eikenberry said collective giving was often employed in communities traditionally underrepresented in traditional philanthropy, such as the Community Investment Network, which connects African-American led giving circles across the country, and the National Giving Circle Network, which is led by Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. They also found that these entities are mostly women-led.

One of the early mechanisms for collective giving was Shared Gifting Circles, and at the forefront of promoting this model was RSF Social Finance, based in San Francisco and founded in 1984. In a gifting circle, a group of nonprofit or community leaders decides how to distribute grants to local organizations. Instead of rich donors making decisions, communities determine how to distribute funds.

Initially, these groups were independent and local. That is starting to change, and Eikenberry says the shift towards networks of shared gifting communities was a trend to watch.

“When we first started doing this work, they were individual groups forming all over the place, without any clear connection,” said Eikenberry. “Now, more and more of these groups are part of networks of giving circles.”

An example of this is the Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory (TRCC), a network of regional and national organization leaders who work to revitalize local communities across the US. While not strictly a sharing or gifting circle, TRCC uses a co-funding model to distribute grant money among its members, with a twist — participants are not just deciding on who gets money, which is common in giving circles but also funding for their own organizations. The result is more collaboration.

“When people are asked to set their interests alongside the interests of other groups they admire and respect, the recognition is that we’re going to do better if we work together,” said Benjamin Roberts, a steward at TRCC. “Over time, proposals have become more collaborative.”

Roberts highlighted another key point — that TRCC’s model was designed by and for its community. There is no one-size-fits-all way to run or organize collective giving, and nearly every gifting circle or co-funding community operates differently, sharing some characteristics but reflecting local needs and desires.

“This is our own little form, that fits within our ecosystem, not something that you would clone, and not something that we would necessarily want to grow,” says Roberts.

Expect more new, unique, and radical forms of collective giving to emerge as the movement goes global. Eikenberry is researching collective giving in the UK, where she has seen some differences in how entities function compared with the US. For example, Transition Town Totnes uses the collective giving model to empower the community to transition away from fossil fuel dependence and toward a locally run, resilient clean energy system.

Australia, too, is seeing a rise of collective giving, with Creative Partnerships Australia stating in a recent report that “collective giving has the potential to substantially grow philanthropy and build stronger communities in Australia.”

“As these groups grow all over the world, it will be interesting to see how they will involve in different ways,” says Eikenberry.

While collective giving research often focuses on the money dispersed, Roberts said funding is just one of the functions of TRCC — and perhaps it is not even the most important one.

“The money gives people a reason to show up,” Roberts said. “But over time, it’s become clear that the most precious thing is the set of relationships that have developed.”

Shareable has been participating in the shared gifting process through the Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory since 2015.

]]>https://www.shareable.net/how-collective-giving-is-transforming-philanthropy/feed/0Q&A with Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economyhttps://www.shareable.net/how-to-do-nothing-resisting-the-attention-economy-book/
https://www.shareable.net/how-to-do-nothing-resisting-the-attention-economy-book/#respondWed, 22 May 2019 19:40:28 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31523Being idle in this age of hyper-productivity can sometimes leave us feeling a sense of profound guilt. Instead of enjoying a few minutes of stillness, we feel constant pressure to do something. This never-ending pressure is what inspired artist and writer Jenny Odell to pen her first book, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention

]]>Being idle in this age of hyper-productivity can sometimes leave us feeling a sense of profound guilt. Instead of enjoying a few minutes of stillness, we feel constant pressure to do something. This never-ending pressure is what inspired artist and writer Jenny Odell to pen her first book, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.” In its pages, Odell takes apart our notions of productivity and explores how in this age of incessant doing, the simple act of doing nothing can be revolutionary.

Odell’s book is anti-capitalist and in many ways an indictment of busyness. She critically analyzes the idea of productivity that is so central to our society, and comes up with some fascinating insights. Shareable spoke with the author about productivity, capitalism and social media.

Robert Raymond: What inspired you to write this book?

Jenny Odell:The book came out of a moment that I was having in late 2016 — there was the election [of Donald Trump] and we also had the Ghost Ship fire here in Oakland. It was a moment in which I was observing that I had kind of an abusive relationship with my media consumption. It was a little bit of a crisis for me, and my reaction was to go sit in the Oakland Rose Garden and do nothing — that was the seed of it. This led me to think about the importance of public space and similar kinds of spaces for wandering and non-goal-directed activities as being something that wasn’t just a luxury but that is actually very important for reflection and processing.

Can you sketch out the thesis you explore in “How to Do Nothing”?

The book is an argument about what productivity is for. One risk of being caught up with the idea of productivity is not asking questions like, “productive of what?” and “for whom and why?” It’s bound up with this critique of ideas of progress and innovation that don’t acknowledge what is already around us and that might need to be repaired and cared for.

And it’s obviously not about actually doing nothing. It’s really more about inhabiting a mindset that is different from the one that is pushed on us all the time. We’re asked to make judgments and to produce statements, opinions and knee-jerk reactions pretty frequently. Ultimately, we’re asked to have something to show for our time. Doing nothing is my shorthand for other ways of thinking and being.

Things like listening, observing without knowing, watching and not making a judgment. For example, I talk about bird watching in the book, an activity that doesn’t produce any deliverables — there’s nothing that you can show for your time when you’ve just been sitting and observing. From a traditional view of productivity it doesn’t appear to be producing anything; it appears unproductive. But I’m making the argument in the book that bird watching, and other similar activities, really only look useless from a very narrow definition of usefulness.

Let’s explore those definitions of productivity and usefulness. You tie all of this in to our current economic system, which has been very successful in colonizing not just the outer world, but our inner worlds as well. Can you talk about the connection between capitalism and this idea of productivity?

A lot of it boils down to this idea that time is money. That’s been the case for a long time, but time has become money in a more complete way than it has been before. And also in more granular ways that are much more part of everyday life, stretching outside of what we would call work and also into the way we view ourselves.

So in a purely capitalist system anything that can’t be appropriated or sold is seen as superfluous or useless. It’s an especially ruthless framework when you apply it to how you imagine yourself and the parts of yourself that are not “valuable.” And it not only threatens these parts of ourselves, but it also threatens our environment. There are places that don’t appear productive but that are actually hugely necessary to everything else. So there are important parts of ourselves and parts of the environment that are not recognized from a purely capitalist framework.

In the book you dive deeply into the world of social media. Can you talk about this idea that you call “the attention economy” and how it relates to social media apps?

These apps are designed specifically to keep you on them as long as possible; it’s referred to as persuasive design. I fairly often have the experience of looking at something on my phone and then looking up and seeing something in physical reality in front of me that’s really surprising, that had just been there all along without me noticing it. In the book I talk about the crows that I’ve befriended on my street. A couple of times when they’ve landed near me, they’re looking at me and waiting for me to notice them when I’m looking at my phone. They’ll make this really sharp noise directed at me to get my attention.

But there are also problems around what kinds of expression and interaction apps allow — and what time frame they exist in. They don’t provide an in-person interaction, and you have to design your utterances to get attention over and above all of the other utterances that are going on. That doesn’t bode well for the formulation of your own thought and the ability to have conversations with others.

So many of our interactions are now mediated through these companies that constrict our dialogue within algorithms intentionally designed to maximize profit. It not only shapes how we communicate, but it also shapes how we experience the world. It’s like, is an experience really worth having if you can’t make an Instagram Story out of it? It has a cheapening effect on our interactions with each other and with the rest of the world.

I think cheapening is a really great way of putting it. That’s why it remains really important for me to occasionally have experiences that not only don’t post on social media, but that I don’t even tell that many people about. In the book I write about a trip where I went to go see the Mokelumne River, where we get our drinking water from. [It originates in the Sierras northeast of the Bay Area.]

There was a large portion of that trip where I didn’t have [cell] reception and I happened to go to this extremely beautiful place that is not super well known. I had this whole day where I walked around and it’s something that just lives in my mind. When you have those moments it’s really a great reminder that those things really did happen even though you didn’t share them on social media. They retain the kind of depth and interiority that they had when you had the experience.

There’s a strong sense of opposition throughout your book. Far from advocating for lethargy or for people to check out, you seem to be advocating for a certain kind of resistance. You write, “to resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system.” What is the role of resistance in your thesis?

On the individual level, if you live in a culture that prizes constant, forward-moving productivity, just the act of doing nothing or refusing to be productive is an individual instance of resistance. Of course, I also talk about how not everyone can afford to do that in the same way or in some cases at all.

On the collective level, what’s necessary right now is a very nuanced and perhaps time-consuming conversation about what we need to do and how we need to do it. Those conversations are not well served by the kind of expression that commercial social media encourages. Resistance comes out of individuals allowing themselves more time to think and process and to not participate in this constant productivity. That could be helpful for the dialogues that we should be having with each other.

]]>https://www.shareable.net/how-to-do-nothing-resisting-the-attention-economy-book/feed/0How 186 seniors building an exhibit on social isolation also built a communityhttps://www.shareable.net/how-186-seniors-building-an-exhibit-on-social-isolation-also-built-a-community/
https://www.shareable.net/how-186-seniors-building-an-exhibit-on-social-isolation-also-built-a-community/#respondTue, 21 May 2019 18:08:09 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31498A California museum’s new exhibit dedicated to exploring loneliness among senior citizens serves as an example of how to combat the very problem it highlights. By recruiting local seniors to design the exhibit, the museum fostered conversations and prompted participants to forge bonds that helped reduce the very social isolation they were working to illustrate.

]]>A California museum’s new exhibit dedicated to exploring loneliness among senior citizens serves as an example of how to combat the very problem it highlights. By recruiting local seniors to design the exhibit, the museum fostered conversations and prompted participants to forge bonds that helped reduce the very social isolation they were working to illustrate.

The exhibit, which opened in April, grew out of a push by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History to raise awareness of the American epidemic of loneliness.More than one in five adults in the U.S. report feeling lonely, isolated, or lacking in companionship. This isolation can have an adverse impact on people’s physical health, especially among elderly people, who are often the hardest hit by social isolation. Lonely adults over 60 have been shown to have a 45% higher risk of death compared to more socially connected peers, and a 59% higher risk of mental and physical decline.

In Santa Cruz County, the problem has become extreme: 36% of surveyed elders in the area reported feeling lonely regularly. With these kinds of numbers in mind, museum leaders decided the best curators would be the experts on the problem: seniors themselves. They put out a call for interested community members and ended up with a committee of nearly 200 local seniors. Along with local nonprofits, volunteers and museum staff, the seniors designed a comprehensive, interactive exhibit called We’re Still Here, which will be on display at the museum until January of 2020.

Image provided by Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History

It turned out that the process of designing the exhibit helped reduce social isolation. For the senior curators and their collaborators, the opportunity to work together to tell real stories of loneliness led to deep connections. “At one of the early [committee] meetings, these women were sitting together, and it came up that they were all recently widowed,” said Ashley Holmes, the museum’s marketing manager. “They became really close, because it was helpful for them to talk to others going through the same thing. One of them actually even did artwork for the exhibit about her experience.”

The exhibit includes artwork and photos by local artists and seniors, interactive activities, and even a dance portion, which all deal with different facets of social isolation among the elderly. Seniors are at a high risk for social isolation because they have usually stopped working and, in the West especially, regularly live alone. Seniors may be less mobile than other members of a community and are often on fixed incomes that don’t allow them to do “fun” activities like going to a restaurant or a movie.

One of the most compelling features in the display is an action wall with cards featuring 45 things people can do to address the problem. Action items range from donating an iPod to translating written materials for monolingual elders. “This can be a really difficult topic,” said Holmes. “It’s a heavy thing. The committee didn’t want people to walk away feeling depressed and disempowered, so they included a way for them to engage.”

Although it opened just over a month ago, the exhibit has already brought enthusiastic feedback from Santa Cruz community members. “Overall, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. People have seemed so touched,” said Holmes. “It is a really powerful exhibit, even if it is emotionally difficult.”

Five local artists collaborated with the seniors to create artwork for the exhibit, including Wes Modes, an audio artist who recorded the seniors’ stories for visitors to hear at the museum. “Working with these engaged and active seniors has been eye-opening,” said Modes. “I felt like I’d met friends from whom I had a lot to learn.”

The Museum plans to host a variety of events related to the exhibit held over the next several months, and information, blog posts and updates on thewebsite for those who can’t make it in person to visit.

]]>https://www.shareable.net/how-186-seniors-building-an-exhibit-on-social-isolation-also-built-a-community/feed/0The resurgence of local food swap eventshttps://www.shareable.net/the-resurgence-of-local-food-swap-events/
https://www.shareable.net/the-resurgence-of-local-food-swap-events/#respondMon, 20 May 2019 19:18:18 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31500The food swap movement that began sprouting a decade ago from Portland to Philadelphia, is once again popping up in new incarnations around the country. Kate Payne, author of “The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking” and “The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen,” thinks the popularity of food swaps is based in the opportunity to

]]>The food swap movement that began sprouting a decade ago from Portland to Philadelphia, is once again popping up in new incarnations around the country. Kate Payne, author of “The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking” and “The Hip Girl’s Guide to the Kitchen,” thinks the popularity of food swaps is based in the opportunity to connect with the community over something people are really passionate about.

Usually a recurring event, food swaps allow direct trades to take place between attendees — for instance, a loaf of bread for a jar of preserves or a half-dozen backyard eggs. Your special kitchen concoctions become your own personal currency, allowing you to diversify your pantry while getting to know members of your local food community.

The Food Swap Network website, which offers resources for people to start their own groups around the world, now gets several new account requests each month.

Image provided by Emily Han via Food Swap Network

Payne, who launched a food swap in Brooklyn almost a decade ago and Emily Han, founder of the Los Angeles group, created the Food Swap Network in 2011. The duo discovered they were both passionate about making it easier for people to host in their own cities and towns.

In the early days of Payne’s Brooklyn food swap, the sharing economy and DIY food projects were both on the rise. But Payne, who now lives in Austin and participates in the Austin Food Swap noticed a bit of a decline in action after the trend really blew up a few years ago.

However, more recently, there seems to have been a passing of the torch to new people who are ready to reinvigorate these swaps with new energy.

One recently rejuvenated swap is the Philly Food Swappers, which in June will be hosting its first event in two years. With new community energy and a free space to meet, the group is on track to quickly fill the 20 open trading slots.

The Philadelphia swap began in 2011 when Marisa McClellan, author of the “Food in Jars Kitchen,” got together with fellow local foodies to start a series of free food swap events where like-minded DIY canners, bakers, and picklers could get together to swap their wares. McClellan and her friends started the Philly Food Swappers just as the food swap movement was picking up pace around the country. They started with 30 people in a church basement and did seasonal swaps until 2017 when loss of a good free space and other organizer commitments put the swaps on hiatus.

Back in the summer of 2012, I attended a Philly Food Swappers event in a greenhouse in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood. I came armed with an amateur stockpile of homemade challahs and zucchini breads and left with the wares of two dozen other swappers including caramel apple bread, olive oil granola, cranberry chutney, fresh-picked tomatoes, pear vanilla jam, dill pickles, and pumpkin gnocchi.

McClellen says the best part about the events is the sense of community created when you get to taste each other’s food, like homemade beet kvass, a fermented drink similar to kombucha she scored at a recent swap.

“People come together to share, and you just bring one thing and leave with so many interesting and new homemade items,” McClellen says.

Payne echoes McClellan, noting, “You can showcase what you are really good at and trade for items you may not create as well. It’s also a cool way to connect in a society where we are so hyper-connected but starved for actual in-person relationships.”

You don’t need to be a master chef to participate in a food swap. You can bring any handmade edibles – from baked goods to sauces and jams or even herbs and veggies from your garden.

]]>https://www.shareable.net/the-resurgence-of-local-food-swap-events/feed/0Shared Property Tax System reduces disparities in public serviceshttps://www.shareable.net/shared-property-tax-system-reduces-disparities-public-services/
https://www.shareable.net/shared-property-tax-system-reduces-disparities-public-services/#respondThu, 16 May 2019 18:14:58 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31441A city’s property tax system can worsen the gap between the rich and poor. Rich districts generate more funds for city services in their areas. Poor districts often get less services. Residents then sort themselves according to what areas they can afford, increasing disparities and thus tensions between groups. Can this vicious cycle of rich-getting-richer

]]>A city’s property tax system can worsen the gap between the rich and poor. Rich districts generate more funds for city services in their areas. Poor districts often get less services. Residents then sort themselves according to what areas they can afford, increasing disparities and thus tensions between groups. Can this vicious cycle of rich-getting-richer and poor-getting-poorer be broken so that all citizens can share equitably in the wealth and services of their city?

In 2008, Seoul implemented the Shared Property Tax System to address fiscal disparities between the city’s 25 districts. As described in the research paper, “The Impact of the Shared Property Tax System on the Localities’ Fiscal Capacity,” all 25 of the city’s districts contribute 50 percent of property tax revenues to a single pool, which is then redistributed in equal shares to the district governments. The paper suggests that the equal redistribution policy significantly reduced fiscal disparities among localities within the first four years. Another prominent example of property tax sharing is the Twin Cities of Minnesota, which implemented their scheme in 1971.

]]>https://www.shareable.net/shared-property-tax-system-reduces-disparities-public-services/feed/0How the city of Los Angeles empowered civic participationhttps://www.shareable.net/los-angeles-civic-participation/
https://www.shareable.net/los-angeles-civic-participation/#respondWed, 15 May 2019 16:40:55 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31324In the mid-1990s, Los Angeles faced some serious challenges: residents of the San Fernando Valley, the Harbor, and Hollywood had organized movements threatening to secede from the city. As reported by The Economist, The New York Times, The Atlantic and The City Journal, organizers believed both that they received disproportionately fewer and lower-quality services from

]]>In the mid-1990s, Los Angeles faced some serious challenges: residents of the San Fernando Valley, the Harbor, and Hollywood had organized movements threatening to secede from the city. As reported by The Economist, The New York Times, The Atlantic and The City Journal, organizers believed both that they received disproportionately fewer and lower-quality services from the city, and that the L.A. city administration paid too little attention to their needs.

The city sought to address these grievances by developing a system of greater representation that could also encourage greater civic participation. The 1999 City Charter amendment introduced a legally established Neighborhood Council System and a Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to support it (Article IX, Sec.900). Secession failed at the ballot and, by 2004, the details and legal ordinances of a Neighborhood Council System were developed and implemented.

]]>https://www.shareable.net/los-angeles-civic-participation/feed/0Housing act gives purchase power to San Francisco nonprofitshttps://www.shareable.net/housing-act-gives-purchase-power-san-francisco-nonprofits/
https://www.shareable.net/housing-act-gives-purchase-power-san-francisco-nonprofits/#respondMon, 13 May 2019 20:10:57 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31387There’s a guessing game that many of us from the San Francisco Bay Area have started playing while we’re traveling: “What do you think the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is in San Francisco?” In response, your interlocutor will usually make a few guesses which they believe to be very high. In most

]]>There’s a guessing game that many of us from the San Francisco Bay Area have started playing while we’re traveling: “What do you think the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is in San Francisco?” In response, your interlocutor will usually make a few guesses which they believe to be very high. In most cases, you’ll have to keep telling them to go higher. Eventually, they’ll approach the correct figure, and the game ends. “It’s almost $3,700,” you’ll reveal, as they laugh in disbelief. It’s not a very fun game.

The San Francisco Bay Area has been experiencing a housing affordability crisis for quite some time now. Homelessness has reached unprecedented levels, evictions have skyrocketed, and many people are finding it difficult to live in the cities they work in. It’s the magnitude of this crisis which compelled San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors to unanimously pass a piece of legislation this month that could give a big boost to affordable housing in the Bay Area.

The Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or “COPA,” is the result of years of organizing by housing rights organizations. The act makes it easier for housing nonprofits (including land trusts) to compete in a market that is currently dominated by giant developers and speculators.

COPA does this through two policies: the right of first offer and the right of first refusal. The former requires landlords who are selling privately owned properties with three or more units (or any properties that are zoned as such) to first offer their property to local housing nonprofits before they go to the open market. The right of first refusal gives housing nonprofits the right to match the sale price of any of these properties that do make it to market — meaning as long as they are paying market rate, nonprofits will be given priority.

“We have people that have lived here for generations and who are being priced out of the city because of a massive influx in wealth,” Ian Fregosi told Shareable. “And so we can’t really just sit back and let the market run its course.”

Fregosi is a legislative aide to San Francisco District 1 Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, who authored COPA. The overwhelming support for this act is a consequence of the housing affordability crisis in San Francisco, a city which has seen its stock of affordable housing stagnate in recent years.

Currently, housing nonprofits are subject to a variety of limitations that make it difficult to compete with cash buyers.

“In many cases, the nonprofit never gets a chance to really bid on the property because they have to deal with a lot of other factors,” Fregosi explained. “They have to get funding from multiple sources … to be able to make a bid in the first place, for example. These things take time.”

But COPA shifts this dynamic by requiring sellers to notify a predetermined list of local housing nonprofits before they put their property to market. The act would give the nonprofits five days to respond and then an additional 25 days to make a concrete offer to the property owner, a time window that could make a substantial difference. Proponents of the act hope it will begin to address some of the affordable housing shortages in the city.

But despite making nonprofits more competitive, COPA leaves a city still gripped by market forces. Sellers are under no obligation to sell their properties to nonprofits, so the latter can still be easily outbid by buyers who have more money.

“Obviously we can’t constrain the market, and there are still limitations,” Fregosi admitted, “COPA is not going to fix all of our problems. But it’s part of a broader anti-displacement strategy that the city has to both produce more affordable housing and to preserve the existing housing.”

Although it’s not necessarily a systemic solution, COPA has precedents that suggest it could be an important step toward empowering San Francisco tenants and housing rights activists. The Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), in place in Washington D.C. for almost four decades, works similarly to COPA, except instead of focusing on housing nonprofits, it gives the right of first offer and of first refusal to the tenants themselves (usually through tenants associations).

A more recent move, also in Washington D.C, is the District Opportunity to Purchase Act (DOPA), which gives the District itself a chance to purchase units if the tenants cannot. DOPA was passed in late 2018, so it’s too soon to know how successful the law will be, but over its forty-year lifespan, TOPA has proven to be a useful tool in combating gentrification in D.C.

“The D.C. laws are where a lot of the inspiration for COPA came from,” Fregosi said. “It’s a good anti-displacement policy which we actually expanded on by making sure that the properties that are purchased through COPA are permanently removed from the speculative market and preserved as permanently affordable housing.”

The idea is starting to catch on across the San Francisco Bay. Fregosi has been fielding interest from city representatives and activists in cities including Berkeley and Oakland.

“We’re hoping that this is something that will spark a movement and that will cause people to think about housing as a human right and not a commodity,” Fregosi said. “It’s going to take a long time to be able to shift that paradigm — but it’s a good start.”

]]>https://www.shareable.net/housing-act-gives-purchase-power-san-francisco-nonprofits/feed/0Is South Korea’s growth-at-all-costs commitment a recipe for disaster?https://www.shareable.net/is-south-koreas-growth-at-all-costs-commitment-a-recipe-for-disaster/
https://www.shareable.net/is-south-koreas-growth-at-all-costs-commitment-a-recipe-for-disaster/#respondThu, 09 May 2019 20:43:30 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31352Will South Korea press forward with an economic strategy focused on technological and commercial growth, or will it confront its growing economic divide and the coming climate crisis with inclusionary policies aimed at preserving the planet? That was a key question confronting a thousand diplomats, party leaders, academics, top government officials, and other attendees –

]]>Will South Korea press forward with an economic strategy focused on technological and commercial growth, or will it confront its growing economic divide and the coming climate crisis with inclusionary policies aimed at preserving the planet?

That was a key question confronting a thousand diplomats, party leaders, academics, top government officials, and other attendees – including one Nobel Prize winner – gathered to debate the future of South Korea at the Korea Forum 2019.

The April 25 event was the latest installment of an annual event co-hosted by The Korea Times and its sister paper the Hankook Ilbo, one of the country’s largest daily newspapers, which was celebrating its 65th anniversary. It was also an eye-opening crash course on the status of the South Korean economy, its challenges, and the aspirations its leaders have for the country.

A key theme was how to increase South Korea’s slowing economic growth rate. Some speakers acknowledged that the spoils of growth should be shared better, but tackling the country’s dismal record on social and environmental indicators compared to other developed countries wasn’t on the agenda. Climate change was scarcely mentioned.

Such growth rhetoric is far from unusual among developed countries, but it’s worth reviewing the roots of this relentless focus in South Korea, which was already a poor country when it was reduced to near ruin during the Korean War. In what is frequently referred to The Miracle on the Han River (where Seoul sits), the nation quickly rose from the ashes to become not just an “Asian Tiger”, but one of the most advanced economies in the world. This ties economic growth to an inspiring national myth.

Wrestling over the vision of a future South Korea

The welcome speech by the chairman of the Hankook Ilbo, Seung Myung-ho, set this tone by expressing concern about South Korea losing its competitive edge during a decade of slowing economic growth. The country’s incredible 30-year economic growth streak only began to decelerate in the new century. Myung-ho stressed the need for structural reforms to accelerate growth and adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), a wave of powerful new technologies including artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, and quantum computing that promise unprecedented disruption.

Moon Hee-sang, the Speaker of the National Assembly, offered something of a counterpoint, but without questioning the growth narrative. He spoke of the need for a grand consensus to strengthen the social safety net, revitalize local economies, and better share the spoils of a growth economy.

Even as the growth imperative dominated the narrative at the event, some speakers argued, albeit tepidly, that the costs of growth must be addressed.

For example, South Korea ranks near the bottom in the OECD’s Better Life Index and achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Yun Jong-won, Presidential Secretary for Economic Affairs, noted that real incomes are flat or declining as social and environmental costs mount, and he briefly suggested a possible new paradigm where growth is shared and quality of life improved.

Isao Yanagimachi, a professor at Keio University, outlined South Korea’s bifurcating labor market where a gradually declining core of unionized workers in South Korea’s largest multinationals (called chaebols) advocate for themselves while a growing periphery of unrepresented freelancers, small business owners, and platform workers suffer poorer wages, working conditions, and social safety (sound familiar?). One particularity of the South Korean labor market is that unions are organized by company, not industry, leading to wage disparities between similar workers in different companies.

I gave one of two speeches to kickoff the last panel, emphasizing the need to invest in people so that all South Koreans were prepared to navigate turbulent times, had the vision and capacity to build a more just and sustainable country, and could better create their own livelihoods. As the country considers allowing ridesharing, I also discussed the negative impact of ridesharing in the U.S. (higher vehicle miles traveled, more congestion, more traffic fatalities, and more) as a warning.

Ridesharing could be a litmus test for the nation’s future

The tensions around ridesharing couldn’t be higher in South Korea. The opposition by taxi drivers is the fiercest I’ve seen worldwide and has tragically included at least three drivers setting themselves on fire in protest. I also offered several possible directions to support labor (platform cooperatives), manage 4IR in the public interest (Cities Coalition for Digital Rights), and create more sustainable communities (sharing neighborhoods and cities). I closed my speech suggesting that South Korea apply the same focus used to recover from the Korean War to tackle the world biggest challenges like climate change.

Jeon Hyun-hee, head of the carpool and taxi task force, later gave an insider’s account of the beyond-bitter conflict between taxi and ridesharing interests. Taxi drivers have stonewalled her and thrown water thrown on her. She said taxi drivers refused to even speak to her for fear they would weaken their position.

I was followed by Lee Jae-yeol, a professor at Seoul National University, whose speech was intended to offer a contrast to mine. A passionate technology evangelist, he painted a picture of an inevitable future characterized by hyper-saturation of technology throughout society, and argued South Korea should lead this move.

In the panel discussion that followed, this theme was reinforced. This created a lively back and forth as I warned that the technological determinism I heard expressed could strengthen authoritarian elements in South Korean society. Panelist Choi Sung-jin, President of the Korea Startup Forum, skillfully countered that tech startup culture is about problem solving by free agents.

I left the conference feeling that South Korea’s economic challenges largely mirrored the situation in other developed countries. Far from being a sign of South Korea’s success, however, that parallelism struck me as profoundly dangerous. The nation’s strong commitment to an economic growth path that doesn’t acknowledge the unique challenges of our times seems suicidal given the seriousness of climate change and approaching ecosystem collapse worldwide.

]]>https://www.shareable.net/is-south-koreas-growth-at-all-costs-commitment-a-recipe-for-disaster/feed/0The new movement connecting social enterprises across Brusselshttps://www.shareable.net/movement-connecting-social-enterprises-brussels/
https://www.shareable.net/movement-connecting-social-enterprises-brussels/#respondThu, 09 May 2019 20:18:05 +0000https://www.shareable.net/?p=31347Citizen initiatives across the Belgian capital are finding new ways to collaborate and coordinate their efforts. Could this be a new model for influencing social change in cities? Brussels is a city that’s intimate with inertia. In its center stands the Palais de Justice, a grand 19th-century courthouse that was once described as the eighth

]]>Citizen initiatives across the Belgian capital are finding new ways to collaborate and coordinate their efforts. Could this be a new model for influencing social change in cities?

Brussels is a city that’s intimate with inertia. In its center stands the Palais de Justice, a grand 19th-century courthouse that was once described as the eighth wonder of the world. Scaffolding was erected in 1982 as part of a bold plan to renovate the building for the first time since the Second World War, but 37 years later it remains untouched. Political point-scoring and division over budgetary allocations have stalled the project for nearly four decades. Today, the monument serves as an icon for the dysfunction at the heart of Europe’s capital.

For locals, the Palais de Justice is a lesson that it’s often easier to start something from scratch than repurpose an old idea. The city is a hotbed for radical social enterprises, citizens’ initiatives and grassroots activism, each seeking to build alternative business models for a more sustainable and participatory future. Now, a new movement has been born to make them more effective.

Citizen Spring is a network based in Brussels that aims to connect local projects so that groups can identify ways to support each other, coordinate their activities, and promote sustainable and future-facing ideas. It was launched by Xavier Damman, co-founder of Open Collective — a transparent funding platform for open source projects that has attracted donations from big Silicon Valley players like Airbnb and Facebook. During a climate march in the Belgian capital last year, Damman began talking to activists about the support they needed to create a more sustainable Brussels.

“Demonstrating on the streets is the easy thing to do, but it’s also boring. It can be useful, but we should all be asking what else we can do,” he says. “If we want system change, not climate change, we need to recognize the future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed. We need to bring to the surface the things that people are already doing to initiate change.”

Damman reached out to the city’s community initiatives and invited them to join the first ever Citizen Spring event. He took inspiration from industry open days, where businesses are encouraged to throw their doors open to the public, and decided to recreate the idea for citizen-led efforts.

From March 21st to 24th, the city’s social enterprises and grassroots projects took time out of their hectic schedules to showcase their work. Members of the public were offered tours and presentations of 45 different initiatives where they learned why the projects were founded and how they hoped to improve the city. Workshops were also facilitated to find new ways for social enterprises to work together and pool resources.

“It used to be that big institutions, governments, NGOs and private companies had the monopoly on creating an impact. But citizens are becoming more and more empowered to participate,” Damman said. “We want to accelerate that transition from citizens being passive consumers towards being actors, creators, and contributors. Not just by promoting what they do, but by encouraging people to join them. Opening the doors is just the first step, but it’s an important one.”

The concept is already spreading to other cities in Belgium. Antwerp established its own Citizen Spring network earlier this year, and Damman expects more cities in Europe and elsewhere to join the movement in time for next spring. “There are citizen initiatives in every city in the world, but too often they work in isolation. It’s in everybody’s interest that we connect them so they can find ways to increase the reach and impact of everybody’s work,” he adds.

The municipal authorities in Brussels hope the renovations to the Palais de Justice will be finished sometime in 2028. Political deadlock has prevented the Belgian government from both preserving its history and preparing for the future. Fortunately, the citizens of Brussels aren’t asking for permission to take matters into their own hands.

If you’d like to launch a Citizen Spring network where you are, email info@citizenspring.be for more information.